Dr. Carim entered Federal service in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences at DOE in September 2001 where he has led the management team for the Energy Frontier Research Center major collaborations, managed the construction and operation of Nanoscale Science Research Centers and other user facilities, and overseen grant and DOE laboratory programs in the structure and composition of materials. Dr. Carim is currently on detail as Assistant Director for Nanotechnology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He serves as the OSTP co-chair of the Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which is the body responsible for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), and is involved in a variety of other issues at OSTP. He served earlier (2006-2009) as the agency co-chair for NSET.
Previously, Dr. Carim was for over a decade on the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, including service as Chair of the Electronic and Photonic Materials program. Prior to that he was a faculty member at the University of New Mexico and had research posts and activities at the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium in The Netherlands, Philips Research Laboratories Sunnyvale, Bell Laboratories, and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. He also was a visiting (sabbatical) investigator at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. at Stanford University and S.B. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in Materials Science and Engineering.
Dr. Carim's primary scientific contributions have been in microstructural and microchemical characterization of materials, including semiconductor interfaces, superconducting and ferroelectric oxide thin films and ceramics, crystal structure determination, crystalline defects, joining of ceramics and composites, development of anisotropic microstructures, electron holography, and morphology of nanoparticles and nanowires. He has authored or coauthored over 85 research publications in these areas and has given over 100 conference, seminar, and other presentations. His awards and honors include recognition as an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator, receipt of an AIST Foreign Researcher Invitation to lecture in Japan, and participation in project teams recognized with several of the Secretary of Energy's Project Management Excellence Awards.